AI – A Great Tool That Can’t Take Responsibility

Engineered Code Power Pages Memes

Each week, typically on Tuesdays, Engineered Code publishes a (hopefully) humorous meme related to Power Pages or Power Platform. We’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, and honestly, it has been quite successful. It drives a lot of engagement, and I get a lot of positive comments from people about them.

In the beginning, I was responsible for creating the memes. But after about 80 of them, the well was starting to run dry, so I had some of my colleagues at Engineered Code start to contribute. They’ve done an excellent job – engagements on their posts typically exceed what I was getting on mine.

However, recently we did run into a situation where a couple members of the community rightly called us out for an inappropriate post.

Unintentionally Inappropriate

The meme included an image that we should not have used. The image was taken on September 11, 2001 in New York City in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

I review all of our social media posts before they are sent out, including this meme. However, I did not make the connection as to where this image was from. The image didn’t include any obvious references to the events of that day. I just assumed it was from some disaster movie.

My colleague that originally created the meme also didn’t realize the context. They had seen someone else use the image as a meme on LinkedIn, and created one that was specific to Power Pages.

Once someone raised concerns via a comment on LinkedIn, however, it jogged my memory. The image is one that I had seen before. We deleted the post immediately from all of our social channels.

Our goal with the memes is to make people laugh. We purposely stay away from controversial images that involve topics like politics. We would certainly never intentionally use a photo taken during a tragedy for these purposes.

But in the end, I am the one responsible for our social media posts. So while in this case I used a “tool” (i.e. having my colleagues assist with creating memes), I do that knowing that the outputs of that tool are my responsibility.

Hopefully I’m not making things worse by calling my colleagues a tool…

Tools Can’t Take Responsibility

So what does this have to do with AI?

I get asked a lot about AI these days, especially by those outside our industry when they find out I’m in tech. I always say that AI is a fantastic tool, but it can’t take responsibility.

It’s no different than a calculator. Calculators are great tools for engineers to help them design a building. But if you don’t have the knowledge and experience to be able to validate its outputs are reasonable and actually make sense, I wouldn’t want to go into a building that you’ve designed. Tools aren’t perfect.

Of course, neither are humans. Our post proves that. We’ve definitely learned from it, and now make sure that we are aware of the source of an image before using it. But tools can’t take responsibility, or be used as an excuse. Only people can take responsibility.

So use AI. But take responsibility for what it produces.

A Quick Note of Gratitude

I want to thank the people who commented on our post to bring this to our attention – not only for raising the issue, but also for being so gracious about the situation after we deleted the post and messaged them directly to explain that it was an honest mistake.